Latest from Alex Wilhelm

Blue Apron’s IPO moved closer to reality this week as the firm set a price range for its shares. The company is set to go public at a higher IPO price than its last private round, undercutting worry that future unicorn IPOs may only point one direction: down.
The meal-kit startup may IPO at a price between $15 and $17. At midpoint, Blue Apron is worth “just under $3… Read More

We’ve got an Equity Shot for you, an irregular extra hit from the Equity podcast crew.
Today the big news is the potential Amazon-Whole Foods deal, which has led to rampant media speculation, depressed grocery stocks around the nation and allegations of intelligent corporate strategy.
It’s the sort of day that forces you to sit back and re-cast your views of the technology world. Read More

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where each week we discuss other people’s copious dollars and lacking sense.
This week, Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and I — Alex Wilhelm — were lucky enough to have Charles Hudson join our little crew. Hudson is both a managing partner at Precursor and a venture partner at SoftTech.
The… Read More

In a slightly surprising move, Pinterest raised $150 million from private investors this week. Why the firm may have wanted the cash isn’t too hard to understand. When the markets offer you lots of cash on good terms, you tend to say yes. But let’s explore the round for a minute. Read More

Welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s weekly podcast focused on the world of venture capital. Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and I — Alex Wilhelm — were joined by Indy Guha from Bain Capital Ventures. Indy has worked in the venture world for some time, but has taken time off from investing to work at growing companies. He has experience on both sides of the table, as the… Read More

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s premier venture capital-focused podcast.
This week the News Gods disbursed unto the crew a juicy morsel: Blue Apron filed to go public minutes before we sat down to chew over what’s been happening. As you can imagine, it took up a chunk of our time.
But no episode of Equity is complete without our own Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley… Read More

If pops are hard to vet, and IPO pricing remains an art-science hybrid, what measuring stick can we use to decide when an IPO did well, versus gains so steep that it probably could have raised a bit more in its flotation? Read More

After a painful first-quarter miss, Snap, the parent company of the popular social app Snapchat, is looking to avoid the same fate in the second. According to Digiday, Snap is working to drive new and increased business ahead of the end of its second quarter. To do so, the company is said to be cutting deals. In the words of the report, Snap is “looking to goose its ad business with… Read More

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where each week we tell jokes about other people’s money.
This week, Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and I — Alex Wilhelm — were joined by Rick Kline, a partner at Goodwin Procter. Kline is a lawyer focused on “M&A transactions [and] capital markets… Read More

A newly famous transaction type we need to understand is called the “Initial Coin Offering.” An ICO is akin to an IPO, but in temporal reverse (sort of). Although confusing, it has recently acquired prominence as a favored way to launch a new cryptocurrency. Read More

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Equity, TechCrunch’s weekly podcast focusing on all things venture and capital.
This week we pulled off our very first live episode, taping the session during the last day of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2017. For our inaugural public show, Ellie Wheeler of Greycroft joined our merry band of nerds: Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and Alex Wilhelm.
In… Read More

Welcome back to another episode of Equity, TechCrunch’s weekly podcast focused on finding the humor in money.
This week, our own Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm, along with Greylock’s Josh Elman huddled in the SoMa studio right after a certain earnings report. We recorded a day early this week, as a full 66 percent of the core cast had Thursday morning… Read More

If you rewind to late 2013 or early 2014, the market for enterprise startups, and perhaps especially for storage-centered startups, was quite different. Box raised $100 million in December of 2013 and $150 million the following July. Dropbox was on a similar tear, raising a $350 million Series C round in January of 2014 and snagging a $500 million debt facility that April.
There was… Read More

Welcome back to another episode of Equity, TechCrunch’s weekly podcast that works to put the ‘fun’ in ‘venture capital.’
This week from our SoMa studio, Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm were joined by Sequoia’s Roelof Botha. Sequoia, as you might know, was an early backer of companies like Google and Apple.
Celebrating the continuing… Read More

By this time last year, one tech company had gone public. Already this year, nine tech companies have gone public on U.S. exchanges. Needless to say, public exits are looking up.
That comparison becomes starker when you compare SecureWorks, 2016’s first IPO, to Snap, which went public in 2017. SecureWorks priced under range, and it has since fallen nearly 38 percent from its IPO price. Read More

Welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the narrative. Homebrew’s own Hunter Walk joined us for this episode along with co-hosts Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and myself.
This week has been a delightful clown car of technology earnings, so we dove into Twitter’s surprisingly strong report that drove its share… Read More

Welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we dive into the numbers behind the story.
This week, Arlan Hamilton, founder and managing partner of a Backstage Capital, joined co-hosts Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and myself. We discussed the interesting and slightly disappointing $630 million RetailMeNot acquisition, Yext’s above-range IPO… Read More

Welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the financial side of technology.
This week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and your servant sat down with Gene Munster, best known for his bullish takes on Apple as an analyst. Munster is now a venture capitalist at Loup Ventures, where he’s a managing partner.
As a group we dug into Lyft’s… Read More

TL;DR: Cloudera’s recent IPO filing shows a company with steep losses and rapid revenue growth. Today we’ll examine Cloudera’s finances and where it fits into the current IPO universe. Why do we care? The Cloudera IPO could impact a host of other forthcoming debuts from companies that are also running in the red. Read More